‘Why don’t you go out and get us fish and chips, Artie?’
He at first turned up his nose, ‘The old tum does need something inside it, and I could do with some fresh air, but fish and chips, again?’
‘Yes. There isn’t time to make anything for lunch and the chip shop is near. Here.’ Ena gave him the money. ‘I’ll keep going until you get back.’
Ena watched Artie put on his overcoat and wind his old university scarf around his neck. He saluted her, his way of saying thank you because she was buying him food. A minute later a draught swept into the office when the street door opened and closed. Artie had gone.
Ena yawned. It was after one. She had been working since six. Leaning back in her chair she closed her eyes. Her stomach rumbled. The last time she had eaten was at five o’clock that morning, and then it was only a slice of toast. She felt dizzy with hunger, opened her eyes and sat up straight. Turning in her chair Ena looked at Sid’s empty desk. ‘Who the hell is Collins?’ she asked out loud. To go to the trouble to perforate a piece of paper with the name Collins and wrap it in glassine to keep it dry meant Sid knew he was in danger.
Praying that Sid hadn’t suspected he was going to be killed that night, Ena suppressed her tears. Why hadn’t he told her he was in trouble the day he worked from her flat? He must have known something was wrong. She could have helped him. If only… Words used too often and often too late.
Another cold draught shook Ena from her sad contemplation. ‘Mm, something smells good,’ she said, as Artie returned with a bag of fish and chips. He put it on the table and went into the kitchen, bringing with him a bottle of tomato ketchup.
They opened the newspaper and tucked in with their fingers. Artie smothered his chips in ketchup, sucking the red sauce from his fingers every now and then. When they had finished eating, Ena took the greasy pages of newspaper to the dustbin and Artie made them each a cup of tea.
They giggled like teenagers elbowing each other out of the way as they washed grease and newsprint - and in Artie’s case, tomato ketchup - from their hands in the small sink.
Afterwards, their hunger satisfied, they drank tea and discussed where they were in the search for Mr Collins. Or, as Ena pointed out, the person they were looking for could be Miss Collins. When they had finished their tea they went back to work.
The pile of boxes decreased, the mound of folders diminished, and the day drew to a close.
‘So,’ Ena said, ‘that’s it!’
‘Yep!’ Artie agreed.
‘And no sign of Mr or Miss Collins.’
Artie looked around the room, then suddenly stopped. ‘We’ve missed one,’ he said, pointing to a red folder on top of the furthest cabinet.
Ena went over and retrieved it. ‘This is the Voight file,’ she said, returning to the table. ‘I’ve seen it. Have a look.’ She threw it onto the table. ‘It makes very interesting reading.’
‘Good God, the cheeky mare. Does she really think she can get away with using your name and ID?’
‘She did, until now,’ Ena said. ‘And, thanks to Sid remembering he’d seen the name Dudley - my maiden name - somewhere in the cold case files, Henry and MI5 will now have to take our investigation into Frieda Voight seriously.’
Artie yawned and rubbed his eyes. ‘All right if I go? My eyes feel like they’re on stalks.’
‘Yes. Go home and get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Dragging on his coat, Artie called, ‘Mañana,’ and left.
Ena got up from the table and walked over to Sid’s desk. ‘Who is Collins, Sid?’ she asked, lowering herself onto her dead colleague’s chair. ‘Who the hell is Collins?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sitting at Sid’s desk, Ena’s eyes settled on his dictionary. It was a beautiful old illustrated Collins. ‘What the–?’ Her heart pounded as she got up. Taking it from the window sill, she carefully opened it. She leafed through the pages. Between the first and second page of the letter E was a narrow strip of paper. She took it to her desk, tore a page from her notepad, picked up a pencil and wrote down the letter E. A second slip of paper was at the beginning of letter I, a third in N, fourth in P and the fifth in S. She leaned back in Sid’s chair and read, ‘E I N P S?’ Then, a sneaky smile crept across her face and she punched the air. She was looking at an anagram of the word Spine.
Ena laughed out loud. ‘You clever old thing, Sid. Collins is not a person at all, it’s your beloved dictionary.’ Sid had used the dictionary almost every day for something. When he wrote a letter he would look up the definition of an ordinary word to find a lesser known or more unusual one. He never needed the dictionary to do a crossword, but he did occasionally look a word up to confirm he had put in the correct answer. He often quoted from it, correcting Artie if he used a slang word from a song he’d heard on the wireless. “That word is not in the Collins dictionary, Artie my boy,” Sid would say. And he would berate him if he used his precious dictionary without asking.
Ena closed the dictionary and turned it until its spine was facing her. Holding it firmly with her left hand, she ran her right thumb down the side of the dictionary’s spine. Her heart beat fast with excitement as her thumb moved deftly over something small and hard that was hidden beneath the book’s fabric. Using both thumbs she gently eased it up until she saw the bow of a key. Applying a little extra pressure, the blade appeared and the dictionary gave up its treasure. Ena gasped with surprise. With the key was a green ticket. She turned the ticket over in her hand. Printed on one side were the words Waterloo Station, Left Luggage. On the other side, in Sid’s handwriting, 1/6d will solve the case.
Ena was laughing, enjoying her find, when she heard a noise. She caught her breath and, keeping an eye on the office door, slipped the key, the paper with the anagram, and the left luggage ticket into her skirt pocket. She put the dictionary back on the window sill between Erskine Childers The Riddle Of The Sands, and Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. After putting Sid’s chair under his desk she ran to the lavatory where she kept a cricket bat. Armed with the bat, ready to swing it at whoever was outside, Ena crept to the door.
A loud knock made her jump. She opened the office door a couple of inches and peered out. She shivered. It was cold in the covered courtyard. With the bat raised above her head, she crossed to the street door and yanked it open. ‘Inspector?’
DI Powell looked at the cricket bat on her shoulder and fabricated a frown. ‘Do you always greet visitors wielding an offensive weapon?’
‘It’s for self-defence. I wouldn’t beat anyone over the head unless I had to,’ she said, laughing. ‘But seriously, you can’t be too careful these days, not at this time of night.’ She was rambling. ‘Never mind that. What can I do for you, Inspector?’
‘I don’t want to delay you leaving, but we’ve had a break-through in the death of your colleague, I thought you’d like to know.’
‘You’re not delaying me. And yes, I would like to know. Come through.’
Ena closed the outer door and led the inspector into the office. Pulling the door shut, she shivered again. ‘It’s cold,’ she said, rubbing her hands together. ‘This old building wasn’t designed to house humans.’ She realised she was rambling again. ‘Sit down, Inspector.’ Ena returned to her chair. ‘You said you have some news?’
‘When the pathologist first examined Mr Parfitt, because of the damage done when his head hit the railings under Waterloo Bridge, it wasn’t easy to ascertain the actual cause of death. Today, however, he found a circular wound that could only have been made by a bullet.’
Ena struggled to speak. ‘Sid was shot?’
‘Yes. When I saw the pathologist this morning he was adamant that it was a bullet that killed Mr Parfitt. So, I took the forensic chaps back to Waterloo Bridge and we found this.’ He took an envelope from his pocket. Ena put out her hand and the inspector dropped a small calibre bullet into her palm.
Shock took her voice. Her mouth fell open as she turned t
he compacted piece of brass over in her hand.
‘It is the pathologist’s opinion that your friend was shot and then thrown over Waterloo Bridge.’
Ena wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘If it’s too upsetting, Mrs Green–’
‘It isn’t. Go on.’
‘The pathologist believes Mr Parfitt was shot in the ear at close range and the bullet went through his brain. In his opinion, because there was no visible entrance wound, he believes Mr Parfitt’s murder was an execution carried out by a professional killer.’
Ena had suspected Sid’s killer was a professional, but shot through the ear? ‘So Sid would have been dead before he hit the railings on the embankment?’
‘Yes. The pathologist said he would have died the instant he was shot. He wouldn’t have known anything about falling from Waterloo Bridge.’
‘I suppose that’s something,’ Ena said, doing her best to see something positive in Sid’s death. ‘Thank you for taking the time to come and tell me, Inspector. I appreciate it. I’m happy, if happy is the right word, that Sid didn’t suffer. His mother and sister will be too. Do they know yet?’
‘If it isn’t too late, I’m going to see them when I leave here.’
‘I don’t know which is worse, a son committing suicide, or being murdered.’ Ena put her hands palms down on the desk, a gesture that she hoped would convey to the inspector that she wanted to go home. It didn’t.
He looked at the stack of boxes on his left. It had become a habit that, at the end of each day, boxes that were finished with were turned to face the wall. That way any information written on them wouldn’t be seen by late or early visitors. Ena hadn’t long finished looking through the last of the files when the inspector arrived. She followed his gaze. From where he was sitting stencilled information, names and dates - and block capital letters saying Top Secret were not visible.
Ena didn’t want the inspector looking too closely at the boxes and tried to distract him. ‘My colleague Artie will be relieved to know Sid didn’t suffer when I tell him tomorrow.’
‘I’m sure he will,’ the inspector said, still not showing any signs of leaving.
‘If that’s all, Inspector, it has been a long day, I should like to go home.’
‘Yes of course.’ The inspector started to get up, and then sat back down. ‘Could Mr Parfitt’s death have anything to do with the work you do for the Home Office?’
‘I… I suppose it’s possible.’
‘And what exactly is it that you do here, Mrs Green?’
‘As I said before, we–’ Ena stopped. She had decided she could trust the inspector at the mortuary. She wondered why she hadn’t told him the truth about the work they did then. She took a breath. ‘I’m in charge of a small team of investigators who look into cold cases.’
He tilted his head, as if to hear her explanation better. ‘Cold cases?’
‘Yes. Cases that were brought against people during the war that weren’t investigated. Files opened on people suspected of a range of crimes that have gone cold, if you like. Our job here is to go through the files to make sure they were satisfactorily dealt with at the time. If they weren’t, or if the original investigator missed something, we start a new investigation.’
‘In which case the cold file becomes a hot file,’ the inspector said.
Ena laughed. ‘Something like that. Most of the old cases are people suspected of spying for Germany in the war. The Cold Case department was set up to research people who were thought to have been involved in betraying the county, espionage, or committing treason.’ Ena sighed. ‘You won’t believe the number of anonymous citizens who reported innocent people in the war because they looked or sounded different.
‘Take this box of files,’ she said, her hand on the lid, ‘until today it contained a dozen cases that had been left open, cases that may or may not involve the Russians. Most of them have now been examined and closed.
‘There are some cases, not many, but some, that overlap. The military are calling the race for nuclear power the cold war. There’s a race on between us, the Americans and the Russians, to see who can make the biggest and most destructive nuclear bomb first.’ Ena shook her head. ‘If anyone involved in nuclear research or development is suspected of working for the Russians, their details are sent here for us to investigate.’
‘And are there any?’
Ena laughed, nervously. She thought of Frieda Voight and said, ‘We haven’t found any - yet. There are other investigators in other locations who do similar work but we’re given what military intelligence call Code Ones. High security cold cases.’
‘Part of what you told me was true, then?’
‘Yes. I didn’t tell you everything because our work here is top secret. I needed to get to know you first, make sure I could trust you.’
Inspector Powell looked at Ena with surprise. ‘And do you… trust me?’
‘Yes. I do.’
The policeman gave her a friendly smile. ‘The feeling is mutual, Mrs Green, which is why I told you about the pathologist’s findings. I trust you will keep the details of Mr Parfitt’s death to yourself for the time being?’
‘Of course. And, please keep what we do here to yourself, Inspector.’
‘Goes without saying.’ The inspector stood up.
Ena stood too. She wondered whether she should share finding the key and the left luggage ticket with him. She decided not to, for the time being. ‘Inspector, would you keep the name Collins to yourself too, just until we find out who he is.’
‘Of course. There’s something else,’ the inspector said.
‘Yes?’ Ena’s heart sank. She was desperate to go home, to get some sleep, and stifled a yawn.
‘I have a friend who was at Hendon with me. When we left, I joined the Met and he joined the Sussex Constabulary. He’s the head of Brighton’s murder squad at John Street.’
Ena wondered what the Inspector from Brighton had to do with her, unless Mac Robinson’s death was on his patch.
‘He’s an expert when it comes to guns, especially small arms like the one used to kill Mr Parfitt. So, I sent the bullet down to him when the pathologist told me your colleague was shot in what looked like an execution. It came back this afternoon. The bullet that killed Mr Parfitt was fired from the same gun that killed McKenzie Robinson, the Director General of MI5.’
‘McKenzie, shot?’ Ena’s head began to spin. Her legs felt as if they would buckle beneath her. She caught hold of the desk to steady herself.
‘Because Director Robinson was the head of MI5 and Mr Parfitt’s work - your work - is connected to MI5 through the Home Office I thought you’d like to know.’
‘Yes, of course. I didn’t know the director well.’
‘Well enough to visit him in hospital.’
The DI’s attacking tone caught Ena off guard. ‘Yes, I er, visited him the week before he died.’
‘And well enough to go to his funeral.’
‘You sound as if you’re accusing me of something.’ The inspector didn’t reply. ‘Director Robinson was my husband’s boss. Henry wasn’t able to go to his funeral so I went in his place.’
DI Powell gave Ena a knowing smile. ‘Thank you, Mrs Green, I thought it would be something like that, but I needed to hear it from you.
‘Director Robinson’s death certificate says he died from an intracerebral haemorrhage. It may stay on record as a stroke for ever. But I assure you, the director was executed in the same way, and with the same gun, as your colleague, Sidney Parfitt.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ena took the key and the ticket she’d found in Sid’s dictionary to Left Luggage on Waterloo Station. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to an elderly man sitting on the other side of a glass hatch. ‘I’d like to collect a–’ What was she there to collect? She said, ‘bag.’
‘Got a ticket?’ The old man asked, hauling himself out of his seat with a groan. ‘Arthritis,’ he co
mplained.
Ena handed him the ticket and the old man turned it over and laughed.
‘I remember this. It’s the one and six written on the back that’s reminded me. I’d not long locked up. The fella that left it said it were important. Life and death he said. So, I took the case for him and he gave me ten bob for my trouble.’ The old man gave Ena a tobacco stained grin and ambled off. A minute later he returned with an old brown briefcase that looked like a doctor’s Gladstone bag. ‘That’ll be one and six, then.’
Ena delved into her handbag, took out her purse and extracted two shillings from it. She waved away the sixpence change, lifted the briefcase from the ledge of the hatch, thanked the man and left. She felt vulnerable leaving Waterloo Station with Sid’s briefcase. It wasn’t until she was in the Sunbeam and the case was locked securely in the boot that she felt safe.
Driving home in a state of nervous excitement, the last thing Ena thought about was the green surveillance car. But there it was. Parked in its usual place. ‘Damn!’ She drove on. She looked in the rear-view mirror. It was nowhere to be seen. She relaxed a little. Where to now? She couldn’t go home; the goon in the Austin Cambridge would see the case when she took it from the boot - and it wasn’t safe to take it to the office.
She turned into Stockwell Gardens and found the perfect place. With not a green car in sight, Ena drove into the car park at the rear of their local pub, the Hope and Anchor. The sign in the window said Bed and Breakfast - Rooms Available.
The landlord knew her. He had been in military intelligence during the war and wouldn’t question why she wanted to rent a room for a couple of hours. He didn’t.
Returning to her car she took her scarf and gloves from the passenger seat and locked the door. Standing for some time at the back of the Sunbeam, Ena looked for movement in the cars already in the car park. Then she watched the entrance. Satisfied that she hadn’t been followed, Ena unlocked the boot and took out the briefcase. She walked swiftly to the pub’s back door, went up the stairs to the first floor and into the first bedroom.
There Is No Going Home Page 13